No one had made much of a fuss over Honor until the next day, according to Stuart. Instead, everyone had been too preoccupied with trying to make sure all the doors and windows were sealed tight against the escapees. But the following morning, when Honor’s body had been discovered, it was all anyone was talking about. Honor had fallen in the hubbub, and she was dead. All of the servants had been very sad about it.
Ezekiel wasn’t sure if Stuart was telling him the truth about how much the servants all adored Honor or not. It seemed as if the man was trying to flatter him, and he wasn’t interested in that. What he was interested in was finding out what had happened to his sister. He asked who had discovered Honor’s body.
“I don’t know,” said Stuart. “But someone must have.”
Ezekiel asked if Stuart might have any idea of anyone who might know who that someone was.
Stuart didn’t.
At a dead end, Ezekiel was exhausted. He left the mansion and went into town to the inn where he was staying. His possessions were already in his room upstairs, but there was a tavern downstairs in the inn, and Ezekiel found he could use a drink, so he stopped off at the bar and ordered some ale.
He sipped at the frothy liquid, feeling a little more relaxed with every drink. He peered around the tavern at the other patrons Most seemed to be locals, commoners who lived in Sarrasarra. They eyed him, wary of the nobleman in their midst. It made Ezekiel uncomfortable, so he turned back to his drink and the bar.
There was a woman tending, not a man, and Ezekiel was relieved by that. He found that he often was looser with a bit of ale in him, and he sometimes gave himself away with the barkeeps, being a little too… demonstrative. He wasn’t supposed to be feeling attraction at all, of course, but he couldn’t help that. The best he could do was not to act on his attractions. And that was easier said than done.
Sighing, Ezekiel thought of Gabriel. Did he believe the man? Part of him wanted to, and it wasn’t only because of Gabriel’s charming smile. Gabriel seemed… genuine somehow, and he wanted to put his trust in that impression.
But the evidence…
He gulped at his drink.
“Another ale, sir?” asked the barmaid.
He hadn’t finished this one, but why not? He tipped the glass to his lips and sucked down the rest. Setting the glass down, he said, “Yes, thank you.”
The barmaid began to fill up his glass from the barrel behind the bar. “Were you up at the emperor’s mansion today?”
Ezekiel cocked his head, trying to decide if the barmaid was fishing for information or simply making conversation. He decided on the latter, since he didn’t see what she’d want with information. “I was.”
“Figured.” She set the glass in front of him. “Most of the nobles that come through here go up to the mansion.”
He nodded. “Well, so did I.” He expected the barmaid to wander off after the brief exchange. But instead, she leaned against the bar. “Did you happen to see the emperor’s son’s new wife when you were there?”
“Actually…” He furrowed his brow. “Why do you ask?”
She shrugged. “Oh, no reason. It’s just that everyone wants a look at her. Word is that she wasn’t nobody before he married her. Just some merchant’s daughter who lived in West Sarrasarra.”
“I wouldn’t know, of course.”
“Well, you seen her, though?”
“I did.”
“And you didn’t know who she was? She wasn’t some noble lady?”
“No,” said Ezekiel. “She wasn’t.” He really didn’t want to talk about this. It was making him angry all over again. He couldn’t understand why Gabriel hadn’t simply married his sister. Why this girl instead? And why had he claimed he didn’t love her? Why had he denied what was obvious?
“Doesn’t make sense,” said the barmaid.
Ezekiel chuckled darkly. “It makes perfect sense. The emperor’s son obviously got the girl in trouble and didn’t want his child to grow up a bastard.”
The barmaid shook her head. “Not the emperor’s son. No, no, there’s talk about that one.”
“Talk?” said Ezekiel.
The barmaid leaned forward and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Gabriel has unnatural tastes.”
Ezekiel drew his eyebrows together. “What?”
“He don’t even try to hide it neither. He’s always out and about with some boy or the other. Leastways, he was before this marriage. Now, it’s been weeks and no one’s seen him.”
Ezekiel choked. “With a… boy?”
“Well, not a little boy. You know, a youth. A young man, not an old one. You know what I mean. That’s what the ones like him do. They take on with younger ones.”
“Ones like him,” Ezekiel murmured.
“Yeah,” said the barmaid. “Queers. Sodomites.”
“Faggots,” said Ezekiel.
The barmaid nodded. “Yeah.”
Ezekiel got up from the bar. “I think I’ll retire to my room.”
“But you haven’t finished your ale, sir.”
He shook his head. “That’s all right.”
“Did I upset you, sir?” The barmaid looked worried. “I’m so very sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought up the… well, you know.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” He got a few coins out of his pocket and slid them across the bar.
At the sight of the money, the barmaid brightened.
Ezekiel turned and walked away as quickly as he could.
CHAPTER THREE
Gabriel retreated to his study after Ezekiel had stormed away. His study was the place where he felt the most comfortable, and he went there to distract himself when he was thinking unpleasant thoughts. He didn’t like unpleasant thoughts. Gabriel wasn’t particularly good with unpleasantness of any kind. He wanted to live in a world that was only joy and fun and ease.
He didn’t. He knew that. But sometimes, he liked to pretend that he did. If he surrounded himself only with the things that delighted him, and if he brought as much delight as he could to the others around him, then it sometimes felt as if the world were nothing but one big bubble of joy.
He very much enjoyed himself in his study.
He called it the study, because his father had a study, and that seemed an appropriate name. But in reality, it was more than just a room. It spanned several rooms in one of the lower floors of the mansion. It was a library. It was a lab. It was a place of learning and discovery. And it was his. His alone. Not even the servants were permitted down here. It was Gabriel’s place of solitude and respite.
Gabriel had claimed the room as an early adolescent. Like his sisters and brother, he was taught to read. Most people weren’t. The common people never got the chance, and even most other members of the nobility never bothered to learn or to teach their children. The holy men didn’t consider it a good idea. They were fearful that reading might introduce radical thoughts that would challenge all of society. After all, according to the holy men, everything in the world worked well because the people in the empire didn’t question things. They accepted their lot in life, and through that acceptance, they learned to be stronger, more spiritual people.
The holy men were also fond of pointing out that the Scourge had happened when humanity was at its furthest from a natural state. Before the Scourge, humans had mutilated their environment. They’d made flying machines that burned fuel and spit black smoke into the sky. They’d created other machines to send pictures of immoral activities across the entire world at lightning speeds. They’d made injections that stopped human skin from aging—out of vanity, of course. And those injections had created the revenants. The human race had sown a world of danger and pain, and they’d reaped what they’d sown. The holy men claimed that the only way to set the world back on track was to live simple lives, divorced from the activities that had brought down the Scourge.
Reading was considered a dangerous idea. Reading allowed a person to learn about things outside h
is own experience, to dream of crazy ideas. Dreaming was dangerous. Better to accept one’s lot than to dream about it being different. Better to do one’s duty than to rebel.
Better not to think, to question, to try to make improvements.
“Before the Scourge, they thought they were improving their lives,” said the holy men. “But instead, they were only leading themselves to ruin.”
Gabriel thought everything the holy men said was bullshit.
He was lucky enough to be taught to read. The emperor thought it was important for his children—the ruling class—to understand more about their world than just the small bit of it they interacted with. He encouraged the other nobles to learn to read also, but most didn’t listen to him. The emperor felt that a ruler had to know what it was like for others besides himself or he wouldn’t be effective in his ruling capacity.
Gabriel, as heir apparent, was especially encouraged to read.
And read he did. He took to it far more than his other siblings. Most of his sisters gave up after learning to read some fairy stories and composing a few notes to their mothers complete with shaky child drawings of flowers. Michal held on longer than the others, and Simon too, but even the two of them weren’t quite as exulted by the experience of reading as Gabriel was.
Gabriel was entranced. He read everything he could get his hands on. The emperor had an extensive library. The books were very old, all written before the Scourge, and some were quite hard to read. But Gabriel read everything he could. He read novels written just before the Scourge. He read encyclopedias and history books. He drank in all the information that he could get.
The holy men were right. Reading did make him dream.
And it did make him dissatisfied with his life. It was impossible for him to accept his duty when he knew how different the world could be.
He understood that he was very lucky. He’d been born to privilege. He knew that there were other places in the empire where things were even worse. He also sometimes wondered about the wilds beyond the walls of the empire. The borders stretched only over the southern part of what had been the United States of America. There was a lot of land to the north and even more to the west. If people had survived and thrived in the empire, some must have thrived outside the walls as well.
The holy men said that only the members of the Life—which was their religious order—had survived the Scourge. This was because the Life had lived a simple life before the Scourge. They’d never relied on things like electricity and grocery stores to survive. They’d been self-sufficient, so God saved them from death.
But Gabriel thought that was bullshit as well. He didn’t really believe in God—or if he did, the god he believed in much more resembled the clock-maker god of deists like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. (Gabriel was enthralled by Enlightenment ideals.) He didn’t think there was any evidence at all that God interfered in the lives of humans. God wasn’t punishing evil-doers, and he wasn’t rewarding righteous men.
No, Gabriel was convinced that it was up to humans themselves to mete out what justice they could. The world was a harsh, cruel place. On that the holy men were correct. But that didn’t mean that humans had to accept the state of things. No, they could strive to make things better. They could do things to make their lives easier, to foster equality amongst themselves, to make life worth living.
One thing that fascinated Gabriel more than anything else was the idea of electricity. And he used the portion of his study that he called the lab to perform his own experiments. He’d managed to find information in some of his books about something called a battery, which stored electricity to be used to power all manner of things. It had taken him years of trial and error, but finally, he’d cobbled a primitive battery together from zinc, copper, acid, and saltwater brine.
Having made the battery, however, Gabriel wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. He had dreams of a new Renaissance—bringing learning and scientific knowledge to the empire. Once he was emperor, he wanted to gather all the most intelligent men of his time together and give them access to all resources and learning. He wanted to change the world. He wanted…
But he was always getting ahead of himself. He wasn’t the emperor yet, and his father certainly didn’t share his ideas about progress.
Gabriel had brought those traveling gypsies to the mansion because he’d heard that they were doing “magic” that consisted of pretty sparks in the darkness. Gabriel was almost sure it was electricity, and he wanted to see it for himself. But he should have known better, because once his father had seen the show, he’d been furious and locked the gypsies up in the dungeon.
Gabriel should have realized that the holy men would be threatened by such a thing. They’d think it sinful and dangerous.
Luckily, the gypsies had escaped the dungeon somehow, but they wouldn’t have been imprisoned at all if it hadn’t been for Gabriel bringing them to court in the first place.
No, he had to wait. Wait until his father was dead, until he could take over the empire. Then he could run things the way he wanted to.
Gabriel was certain that the only reason the Scourge had been so devastating to the people of the empire was that they’d lain down and taken it. They hadn’t fought back. They’d started, right after the Scourge, when the empire was just being formed. Gabriel had the journals of men from that time. At first, the Life had only been a faction, not the ruling majority. Some of those other men had believed they could change things. That was where the necromancers had come from. If it hadn’t been for people working with the original injections that had created the revenants, they’d never have been able to bring forth necromancers in the first place. And they also knew that the revenants communicated by smell, like bees. The original injection which had caused the revenants had been derived from bee venom. The batch that had gone bad had been infected with some kind of virus. The viral component was what made it possible for revenants to infect humans.
But all of that study had stopped once the faction of the Life had overtaken the empire. No one knew anything more about the revenants, because it was forbidden to question and to try to change things.
Gabriel had read so much about the accomplishments of humanity. He was sure that it was within the purview of the human race to solve the revenant problem. It might not happen in his lifetime, or even in the lifetime of the generation succeeding him, but it would happen. If, and only if, people were allowed to focus their energy on the problem. To use experimentation, trial and error, to find solutions.
The holy men were stifling the potential of the entire empire. Gabriel wanted to change that.
He stared around at his study, feeling frustrated. Now, he was doubly frustrated, thinking of everything he wanted to accomplish. When he’d come down here, he’d only been frustrated because Ezekiel didn’t understand that he hadn’t hurt Honor. But now, it all seemed compounded. Everything seemed so much more dire.
In a way, though, it put his problem with Ezekiel in perspective. He’d been behaving as if his connection to Leah was a terrible secret, one that could destroy everything.
But that was his father talking. His father had confronted Gabriel recently, angry about Gabriel’s choice of bedfellows. He called Gabriel all kinds of foul names and said he was ashamed of him. He said that Gabriel had to hide his weaknesses better, that he needed to be married and to have a child.
I don’t really care what he thinks, Gabriel thought to himself. When I’m emperor, I’ll change everything.
For that matter, he didn’t much care if Ezekiel knew it either. Gabriel was rather used to men being initially disturbed by his preferences.
The truth was, though, that most people would be surprised how many of them changed their tune from disturbed to curious when Gabriel probed a bit. His father thought he was shaming the entire court, but his father didn’t know how many men at court had shimmied out of their trousers and tunics for Gabriel. Not all of them, of course. There were men who were t
ruly only interested in women. But it was surprising how many men didn’t mind stroking a prick when it really came down to it.
Gabriel smirked. If buggery were really such a terrible secret, he supposed he could blackmail those men for their support.
So, he thought he’d be open with Ezekiel. And maybe Ezekiel would prove to be one of those curious men. He was a nice enough man to look at. Gabriel appreciated his thick eyelashes and the fine bits of dark hair on the back of his forefingers. Yes, Ezekiel would be a fun partner for a night. And it was about time, anyway. Gabriel didn’t think he’d been with a man since marrying Leah.
* * *
It was dark outside, and Ezekiel knew he should be going to bed. But he sat up in his room, huddled around a candle and thinking about the fact that no one knew where his sister’s body was. He needed to talk to the emperor himself. That man had sent the message that Honor was dead. He must know the truth of matters.
One thing Ezekiel didn’t let himself think about was Gabriel.
Instead, he peered into the depths of the candle, watching the fire dance, bright white at the edges and darker within where it hugged the wick.
When he lifted his gaze, the imprint of the flame tattooed his vision. He looked out the window into the darkness of Sarrasarra at night. He could see lights in windows down the street. The roads here were the same ones used before the Scourge, though they’d been thoroughly covered in cobblestones years ago. But they were straight and wide, unlike the streets in Ezekiel’s hometown of New Charltow where streets twisted and turned narrowly between buildings.
The darkness was a warm blanket, hiding everything. Ezekiel used to welcome it, because it seemed easier to give in to his abhorrent desires in the dark. But now he knew that it didn’t matter. God saw all, saw deep into his soul, and there was no escaping his own dark self.
Ezekiel shut his eyes.
He could still see the imprint of the flame.
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